The effect of the psychometric properties of the test on the metacognitive monitoring levels determined by the signal detection theory

Metacognitive monitoring is the activity in which the student can be aware of the effectiveness of the cognitive processes applied during the achievement test and evaluate whether they are sufficient to answer the question. An online reading skills test was administered to 3489 sixth grade students, and before each question, they were asked whether they believed that they could answer the question, and after answering the question, they were asked how confident they were about their answer on a scale of 1-5. The data were analysed with Type-2 Signal Detection Theory and metacognitive monitoring levels were obtained. In addition, item parameters were calculated with CTT and IRT. A significant but weak effect of item parameters on metacognitive monitoring levels was found and higher metacognitive monitoring scores were obtained for items with low difficulty and high discrimination. In addition, the metacognitive discriminations of the items were calculated by Chi-Square and correlation coefficient and a moderate negative relationship was found only with item difficulty. As a result, the metacognitive monitoring measurement with Signal Detection Theory on a cognitive test is weakly affected by the characteristics of the test items in practice. However, this finding does not indicate that item selection is unimportant in a cognitive test to measure metacognitive monitoring. The metacognitive discrimination coefficient can be standardised in future studies and criteria for measurements can be determined. Thus, metacognition, which is a psychological structure, can be better measured and its comprehensibility and measurability can be ensured.